How to Use Your Android Smartphone as a Wireless Webcam

Webcam is the accessory that we use basically for video conferencing/chatting. Services like Skype provide free video chatting facility. Video conferencing is another achievement of technology and its evolution has made communication even better, faster and cheaper. So to communicate with video conferencing using computer, the basic requirement is a webcam, a good internet connection and a headphone with mice. If you don’t have any webcam but the Android device then you can use it as a webcam. Today in this post, we will see that how to use any Android (must be more than 2.2) device as wireless webcam.

We will use the app named Smartcam which is made for turning Android device in to a web cam. We can either use Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connection which is available on your computer (as Android has both) but we should give priority to Wi-Fi as it’s faster than Bluetooth.

Let’s see how to use Android device as a wireless webcam.

# Step 1

First of all download and install these apps. (one for Android and another for Desktop)

# Step 2

Now pair the Android device through Bluetooth with your computer, or create Wi-Fi hotspot from your computer and then connect to it through Android device.

# Step 3

Now, open the Smartcam desktop client and click on setting option (you can find it by clicking on file option). Now under connection head, select either Bluetooth or TCP/IP (Wi-Fi) as which connection is preferable for you.

# Step 4

Now open Smartcam in your Android device and select setting option. Then set your preferable connection (make sure its same as you selected on computer in # Step 3

# Step 5

If it’s Bluetooth then click on the Bluetooth server option and select your computer from the list of available Bluetooth devices. And if it’s Wi-Fi then click on the port number and make sure it is 9361 and after that click on the remote server option from the settings available under TCP/IP (Wi-Fi) setting it will prompt you to enter the IP address of your computer. Enter that IP address and hit ok.

To know the IP address, use the command prompt (type cmd in start > run option and hit enter) Then command prompt (black window) will appear then type ipconfig and hit enter, if everything goes perfectly then your IP address will appear on your screen.

# Step 6

Now, start Smartcam app in your android device and select connect to Bluetooth/Wi-Fi (as per your previous selection in step 3)
Make sure your concerned connection (Bluetooth/Wi-Fi) is active on both (on android and pc) and those are properly interlinked (as mentioned above).

If everything goes perfectly, you could see the view which is appearing on the Android screen through camera on your computer screen. Now, start anything on computer that requires webcam (such as skype) and enjoy your wireless webcam.

At the end – you can change the resolution of your webcam through settings available in Smartcam app (Camera Resolution) on your android device under the head Camera setting. The lower the resolution you will set, the faster it will work. While starting it next time, just turn on any connection (Bluetooth or Wi-Fi) on both devices and then start the Smartcam on both devices and click connect to Bluetooth (or Wi-Fi) in Android app.

How was the article? Got stuck anywhere in between? Leave a comment here. I will try my best to troubleshoot that issue. Also have a look on other Technology related stuff.